In the end it's always because I'm trying to force my brain to do something it doesn't want to do, that's true. But it's not necessarily because the work is sha

In the end it's always because I'm trying to force my brain to do something it doesn't want to do, that's true. But it's not necessarily because the work is shallow. Often, the following are true at the same time: - I tell myself that the work should take very little time, after all it's easy. - I tell myself that the work is shallow, and not the deep work that I like. - The actual work isn't even well defined yet! As a result I refuse to think deeply about what to do (because it's shallow, right?), there is no chance I feel good about myself (because no matter how quick or good I do it, that's no surprise, it was small and shallow). And because I didn't actually think about it, I don't realize just how vague those few requirements I have are. And so I feel miserable, kick myself for procrastinating, and no matter how hard I push myself to start, that of course doesn't work because the problem isn't defined well enough. So instead I try to tell myself that my work actually is fun, I can make it interesting because I'm going to take a moment to think about doing it the right way, and first I'm going to take a short walk in the park to think about it, write some thoughts down and then discuss with a stakeholder to check if what I have in mind is what they intended. And then I try to get the thing started, and usually I am then in deep work territory immediately.